A video clip of middle school students verbally harassing a female teacher in a classroom is causing an uproar, which some Internet users claim is the result of the abolition of teachers’ authority following the banning of corporal punishment at school.
The footage shows both female and male students asking the teacher a series of sexually-harassing questions, despite repeated calls for restraint by the teacher.
In a 100-second-long footage uploaded onto web portals and Internet community sites, Saturday, students ask the teacher such questions as “When did you kiss for the first time?, “When did you get your first period?” and “When did you first have sex?” They even ask whether she gave birth to a baby and whether it hurt.
Upset by the students and their ill-mannered remarks, the teacher tries to restore order in the classroom by saying to the students, “Instead of making meaningless remarks, let’s open the textbook.” But the clip shows the pupils ignoring her by continuing to ask sexually-embarrassing questions, while banging on the desks.
The teacher then approaches the main group of students causing the fuss to warn them to stop. But one of male students stands up and tells her, “You are really pretty when I see you close up.”
Here is a news report with the clip, on YouTube for the time being:
The students' behavior, the article says, is being attributed to the recent crackdown on corporal punishment in the classroom. The article reminds us that there was a similiar sensation last year after a male student was filmed sexually harassing a young female teacher.
A point I made at the time and in the Korea Herald, and can revisit here reading their taunts, is that what's considered "sexual harassment" and unruly behavior for Korean teachers isn't too unusual for foreign ones, teachers who haven't used violence and intimadation to hold authority in the classroom.
Maybe the problem isn't that teachers aren't smacking students
7 comments:
I'm inclined to agree with you final point and add to it. I often see parents teaching their kids not to do things that will cause public embarrassment for the family rather than actually instilling a sense of morality.
Also, after a certain age, I think students couldn't care less if the teacher is going to smack them. Look at the size of the boy in the second video in comparison to his teacher. Do you really thing that she's going to be able to give him a good whack with the "love stick"?
I don't understand why you say that this problem is more common in the west and then suggest that it is caused by the Korean education system, in the same breath.
This kind of behavior makes the teacher's job more difficult and more soul destroying. It makes the education system less effective and when it is left unchecked it doesn't much help in socializing children to become respectful adults.
The kids need to learn some respect, somehow; and the kid in the second video needs a punch on the end of his nose.
1) Learn to focus, Korean News people. That report was bloody awful.
2) Marks down and detention. Simple as that. It gets them in trouble for the rest of their day and with their parents. Done deal.
3) Parents in Korea need to actually raise their children. I can't tell you how many of my students stay out until all hours of the night drinking with their co-workers so they don't have to go home and be with their families. It boggles my mind how Koreans place such import on family and marriage while hating it so much and avoiding it at all costs at same time.
I would suggest that the culture of 'violence equals respect/good behavior/power' is now forcing teachers to reap what they've sown.
Students all too often in Korea do not respect a teacher who does not use violence to enforce order in the classroom. Remove the violence factor and it's anarchy.
The government f'd up big time by failing to provide effective alternative classroom control/management training for teachers, and a transitionary period for them to ease into using the other methods.
But I don't even know if other methods of control/management would work in a classroom where students who are under extreme stress and fatigue from forced studying/learning for 18-20 hours a day suddenly realize that the ONE thing that was pushing them to obey this form of abuse and slavery has now been lifted...
I suspect that either the corporal punishment will return, or that there something major will have to change because the system only functions when the teachers can use corporal punishment to force the students to do the insane hours of study and learning...
Point of information - well, subjective and somewhat hersay-ish, but:
Koreans do not do an " insane hours of study and learning." I think if they did they would score a lot higher on international tests (yes, higher, not a mistake) and would learn a lot more than what they show as university students and adult workers.
Koreans do spend an insane amount of time away from home at businesses called hogwons, in their rooms -mostly reiterating without reflection or injesting what they are saying, with private entrepreneurs, or at public (private) K-12 schools. They spend a large portion of that time: sleeping, eating, texting, daydreaming, talking with friends , running around (though I have no studies on all of these and I don't work at any of those places, but I have seen through the windows a lot over the past 10 years and I have had serious and frank discussions with a lot of Koreans confirming all of that), reading comics but not studying and not learning (unless you include socializing or reading comic books learning - which on some level they are, but I doubt that was the intent).
Wow. Seriously, there is so much wisdom and blunt truth in these 4 comments! If I could ever compress problems with the system/culture (and that's not to say that our system/culture or anyone else's is flawless because each one has its own problems) I would use the 4 posts by you gents to justify what needs to be fixed. If only the folks up top would read or hear...
Sometimes I wake up and wonder why there aren't riots on the streets but then again, I've probably lost my own sanity along the way.
The problem with Korean culture is that traditionally females are regarded less in the order of society than their male counterparts. Historically korea once had a culture of violence such that although it is less prevalent now there are still traces of it among the youth. Even in other asian countries, some korean kids who study in K-12 international schools exhibit their rude behavior/culture to some extent. Despite korea as an emerging nation their culture is light years back into the prehistoric era and their kids need to be reoriented and strict discipline should be enforced. The problem is that the government tolerates their male dominant culture. Sucks indeed!
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